The Narrow Door

sermon preached at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Medina, WA
by the Rev. Karen Haig, Priest Associate
Wednesday, October 27, 2010

“Lord, will only a few be saved?” - Luke 13:22-30

I recently flew to California, and because I booked my flight so late, I found myself in a middle seat, sitting between two rather large men. The man by the window had on a ball cap sporting the words “Man of Faith” on the front, and in very large letters, “Jesus” on the back. The man by the aisle was a bit imposing – very sure of himself and seemingly used to being in charge. Squeezing into my middle seat, the space between those two big men felt very, very narrow.

Settling in, I pulled out my prayer book, and no sooner had I done that than the Man of Faith exclaimed, “Amen sister, I’m praising God because we are all believers!” Being the good Episcopalian I am, I smiled at him and replied that yes, that was lovely, and quickly returned to my prayer book. The man on the aisle began to ask questions of the Man of Faith, who by now had spoken enough for me to recognize a significant slowness in his speech, and an inability to completely formulate his words. “God is awesome, man!” he drawled. “God saved my life and I’ve been a believer for 20 years.” He reached into the seat pocket in front of him and pulled out two cards, handing one to me, and one to the man on the aisle. “Look, this is my Mom, this is her ministry.” I read the card, which conveyed a brief version of the story of this man’s near-fatal car accident 20 years earlier, and of his recovery and the entire family’s conversion to Christianity.

“Oh my,” I thought. “I’m in for a long ride …”

As I tried to read my prayers, the two men talked back and forth, each of them leaning in a little toward one another in order to more closely converse. It was a funny feeling … as though I wasn’t even there. And my narrow little middle-seat space was becoming increasingly narrow. I invited either of them to change seats so that they might more comfortably converse, but the Man of Faith wanted the window seat, and the Man in Charge needed the leg room of the aisle.

Understanding clearly that this was not a circumstance conducive to reading my prayers, I closed my book and paid attention to these two men. “What do you do?” the man on the aisle asked me. “Uh-oh,” I thought. I hadn’t planned on a theological debate. I had planned to pray.

As I had been trying to read my prayers, the Man of Faith told the story of his accident, his recovery, his journey to conversion and his beautiful life as a Christian. This man had very certain and specific knowledge of God and of God’s plan for every person on earth. I would venture, in fact, that he would have had an answer to that question posed to Jesus in our Gospel reading today: “Lord, will only a few be saved?” “YES,” I imagine him saying with absolute certainty! “Only a few will be saved.” He’d already made known his very narrow definitions about who would be saved, what all of us must do to be saved, and how if you look at specific verses in the Bible and take them seriously (which to him meant taking them literally), you would know what you had to DO to be saved. Quoting scriptural passages popular among fundamentalist Christians, the Man of Faith described a god I do not know and certainly don’t believe in: an angry, vengeful god whose primary job it was to sort the good from the bad, casting aside all those who did not see the world through the same very narrow lens as did this Man of Faith.

I don’t think this is the way Jesus wanted us to understand the narrow door. This is a difficult passage, though, especially for those of us who understand God to be expansive and compassionate, a God of self-effusive and overflowing love. While we know Jesus often answered specific questions with expansive stories and parables, it is hard to understand his response in today’s Gospel. Why must the door be so narrow? Why will it be closed to many? Why would a gracious God make the doorway so narrow and the path to salvation so difficult? We know the answer to this question. Our good and gracious God did not make the path so difficult. WE make the path difficult.

We make the path difficult every time we exclude someone from God’s love. We make the path difficult when tend to ourselves at the expense of others or turn a blind eye to the injustices of the world. We make the path difficult when we lose track of our prayer life or forget that all we have is gift from God. We make the path difficult any time we allow anything in the world to separate us—or any one of God’s beloved—from the God who loves us all.

That’s why the doorway seems narrow. Because when we’re not paying very careful attention, we find that we’ve gone off the path – perhaps missed the doorway all together.

I think this is why Jesus tells us we must strive to take the less traveled and narrow way – because God knows that which is ugly in the world is indeed powerful. Jesus isn’t saying that what we DO brings us salvation or that our striving will bring us to the banquet feast. Rather, he is saying that being a Christian is big work, that it requires deep attention and intention and that we can’t rest once we’ve self-identified as a woman or a man of faith. We need to be mindful. We need to be prayerful. We need to be humble.

Sitting in that narrow middle seat on the airplane, I knew I needed to honestly engage the conversation that surrounded me. And because it was such an important conversation, I knew I needed to choose my words with great love, real attention, and deep prayer. One cannot proclaim the Good News of God’s all-encompassing and redeeming love in the world by telling someone he is narrow-minded and wrong!

This is a real story of the Christian life, isn’t it? A life where there are always choices. We can choose to take the easy way of disengaging, pretending not to notice the need for God’s love all around us and so not offering that love. Or we can choose to lovingly engage, and do the hard work of squeezing ourselves through that narrow door, choosing our words and actions with great love, real attention, and deep prayer.

What narrow pathways are you negotiating? Where are the very narrow doorways in your life? How are you striving? Take a few minutes of quiet. During that time, I invite you to reflect on these questions and to offer them to God, whose guidance and grace will surely sustain you and help you find your way through that narrow door.